


And One to Grow On

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Birthday Spanking, Canon Era, Episode: s01e01 Currahee, Fluff and Smut, Impact Play, M/M, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:28:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28890645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Nix accidentally works out what Dick really wants for his birthday.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 10
Kudos: 48
Collections: Loose Lips Sink Ships Prompt Meme





	And One to Grow On

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to ThrillingDetectiveTales for fixing my awful spag. You're a star!
> 
> Written to fill the LLSS prompt: "Birthday spanking."

Dick got back to Fort Benning a few days before his birthday. His mother had put up a fuss about him not being able to stay at home longer, and they'd both known that it might be the last birthday they saw each other. Still, as Dick fell back into the now familiar tumble of army life, he couldn't regret not staying with his family. They'd spent his whole liberty doing such a comprehensive job of smothering him that even the army felt like an escape.

If at home, he'd have gotten a party and a cake; here he got Lewis Nixon smirking at him and saying, "Twenty-five, huh? Guess you're an old man now."

"You'll catch up," Dick responded.

"We'll see," Nix told him. The other junior officers didn't pay much attention. It was always someone's birthday, never worth making any fuss over, unless the young man in question were stupid enough to stand a round at the PX, which they all knew that a teetotaller and skinflint like Dick would not.

"Didn't get you anything,” Nix added, and Dick shrugged. He'd given Nix a pair of socks for his birthday the previous fall, and hadn't expected even that much in return. "But," Nix continued, waggling his eyebrows, "if you want a birthday spanking, I'm pretty sure I can arrange that."

Dick laughed, and made a warding off gesture with his hands. They were all still in shorts and t-shirts after coming in from PT, sweaty, muddy and unshowered.

Nix, however, wasn't a man to be put off that easily, even before Matheson wolf whistled encouragingly. He took a step towards Dick, his hand raised for the blow, and Dick didn't have the sense to drop into a proper defensive stance, instead holding his hands up and trying to shove Nix away. Dick might have been the wrestler, but Nix had some weight and what turned out to be a good deal of determination on him, and wasn't going to be waved off.

He ducked up under Dick's arms, and got his left arm around Dick's waist while at the same time he raised his right hand to get in the first of two dozen plus smacks.

"Nix, stop it," Dick said, but he was laughing too hard for it to sound at all convincing, and besides, he liked the feel of Nix's arms wrapped around him and they both knew it. "Nix!"

Dick shoved at Nix's shoulder, his hand finding sweaty skin and sliding off, just as Nix's palm landed awkwardly half way between Dick's hip bone and his ass. The smacking sound it made was shocking, more so than the pain, even, overriding the men's laughing voices and the scuffle of jump boots on bare boards. The pain hit a moment later, but there wasn't much sting to it. The blow had been poorly aimed, and at a bad angle.

A moment after the pain, came the moment of sweaty humiliation, where Dick realised that Nix being able to pin Dick in place long enough to spank him was having other effects. Dick flushed bright red at the same moment as his cock began to fill. He grabbed Nix's arm as it rose for another smack and turned it up behind Nix's back, forcing him to break his hold and back away lest Dick twist his shoulder out of joint.

Nix tumbled away, landing on his ass on the floor, with more apparent impact than he'd just delivered, and Dick straightened and tried to compose himself. He already had a reputation as a stick in the mud, and he hoped that the others would attribute his, "I said, 'no,' Lewis!" to that, instead of the truer, darker reaction. Or to the knowledge that he knew exactly what it felt like to have Nix's hand on his bare ass, squeezing rather than striking, and that Dick had had even less complicated feelings about that.

"If you love birds are done tussling," Matheson announced, "we've only got five minutes left to shower before chow."

"Yes, mother," Nix said, and started to push himself up off the ground. Dick held out his hand, and Nix took it, and they headed for the showers together.

As Dick left the barracks, he put his hand over the spot Nix had slapped, feeling an echo of the blow under his own palm.

* * *

They weren't really doing anything in Fort Benning, other than endless PT and close order drills. The regiment was supposed to move up to Camp Mackall, soon, but no one knew when, and so two thousand recruits were caught up in a post holiday game of hurry up and wait. Even Sobel was having trouble coming up with infractions to keep them on base on the weekends, and Nix somehow wrangled a pass for both of them.

"What's in Columbus?" Dick asked, like it wasn't too late, and he wasn't already standing at the bus stop outside the gates waiting for a ride into the city.

Nix glanced around, taking in the platoon's worth of men in the same situation. "Oh, you know, nothing much," he said. "Good food, good booze, fast women."

"Well, that sounds like my idea of a good time," Dick observed, and Nix laughed at him and lit a cigarette. From the way his eyes crinkled and he looked sideways at Dick over his cupped hands, fast women were not going to be a part of the picture. Dick felt his chest tighten and turned to look down the road for the bus instead of at Nix.

It hadn't been easy, Dick reflected, to be this in love, and not breathe a word of it to his family over a whole furlough. Every time he'd brought up his friends, he'd had to gauge how much was too much to say. When he'd been in his childhood bedroom at night, he'd stroked his cock and wished Nix were there.

This would be the first chance since they'd gotten back to do more than neck in dark corners.

Nix hadn't said how his New Year had gone, just that it was good to see Dick again, but he'd had a lipstick mark on the corner of his mouth that he hadn't managed to wipe off after Kathy had dropped him off.

Looking at Nix now, smoking and staring mildly at the horizon, Dick again felt the overwhelming mix of shame and envy that he associated with Nix's wife. Other than minor indulgences like ice cream or theatre tickets, Dick had never wanted for self-control. Nix had put that all to one side and, like the army itself, had stripped Dick down and built him into someone he wasn't sure he entirely knew any more.

The bus pulling up, and then sitting next to Nix with their thighs touching, drove the thought of anything except what they were going to do that night out of Dick's head. He hadn't quite dared to finger himself open, not in his family home, and certainly not in the barracks, and he ached for the feel of being touched just there, of Nix claiming every part of him from the inside out. There was a strange reversal in that, where by taking Dick, Nix proved who he really belonged to.

They grabbed a fast dinner, mostly an excuse for Nix to drink and Dick to get a creamy strawberry milkshake, then found a discreet room for rent.

"I dropped a few hair pins," Nix explained as he shut and bolted the door, "found some place where they won't mind how much noise we make."

Dick shivered. The cheap rooms for rent in Columbus had never allowed for more than muffling their voices into the pillow or each other's mouths. Dick had learned a dozen different sounds Nix made when he stifled his cries while Dick sucked him down, and at one point he had the bruise left by a set of teeth marks in his shoulder.

"Making noise, huh?" Dick dropped to his knees in front of Nix, and felt for his belt. He rested his chin on the top button of Nix's fly and looked up at him, enjoying the way Nix's hands tightened on his shoulders in anticipation. He'd thought, before he tried it, that sucking someone's cock would be degrading, but it turned out that Dick liked the feeling of power it gave him, how he could take his partner apart as fast or as slow as he liked. He could feel Nix's cock growing hard and tenting the front of his pinks, and decided that he was going to make this slow.

"Hey, Dick," Nix said, and it was the tone that made Dick blink and drag his thoughts away from pinning Nix's thighs down while he sucked his balls. It was a light, deliberately casual tone of a man asking something direly serious while pretending he didn't care one bit.

"Yeah?" Dick asked, drawing out the word.

"You remember on your birthday, what, uh, well, what I said I'd give you?" Again that forced lightness, this time undercut by a stutter.

Dick's hands, which had been massaging up and down Nix's legs, stilled. He did remember. He remembered getting hard at the instant of contact, and knowing Nix must have noticed. He'd been wondering what that meant ever since. Seemed like Nix had too.

When Dick didn't reply, Nix lifted his hands off Dick's shoulders, fluttered them briefly in the air, almost folded his arms, before deciding to put them behind his back, so now he was standing at ease. "I guess I wanted to know if that was something you actually wanted. If you did, I could, you know, give it to you."

The sudden burst of awkwardness around sex, from Nix of all people, was so endearing that Dick had to bury his face in Nix's jacket to hide a smile. Too bad nothing could hide the blush creeping up the back of his neck and lighting the tips of his ears. "Give it to me?" Dick asked, voice muffled by laughter and Nix's uniform.

Nix swatted the back of Dick's head. "Do you want it, or not?" he demanded, sounding a little put off by Dick's obvious amusement.

Realising that he was about to put Nix out of the mood, Dick bent to nuzzle the bulge in Nix's trousers. "I want this," he said, and Nix gratified him with a whimper.

"Or we could do that," Nix agreed. He didn't sound unhappy with the idea, but he didn't sound entirely distracted either. He still wanted an answer.

Dick thought about it. They'd never tried anything like that, but the impact of Nix's hand on Dick's thigh had stuck with him. If he hadn't pictured what it would have looked like to let Nix spank him the full twenty-five times, right there in front of the whole barracks, it was only because he'd forced his mind away from the idea every time it'd started to creep in. He couldn't honestly deny that he didn't want to know what it would feel like to have Nix take his hand to Dick's ass, or even...

"Yeah, I want it," Dick said with conviction, his lips still brushing the front of Nix's pants.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Huh." Nix sounded like he hadn't believed that Dick would go for that. It should probably be beneath his dignity or something, but it didn't seem to be.

Dick stood and started to strip out of his uniform. He supposed they could go with just pulling his pants down, but then it would feel too much like being over his father's knee. Besides, he liked being naked when Nix was still more or less fully dressed, it had a feeling of extravagant debauchery to it. Nix stood with his hands in his pockets, watching Dick peel off his clothes and lay them over the back of the room's single chair. Dick could never figure how someone could look at his lanky, red-headed body with that kind of open hunger, but Nix always did, and Dick certainly wasn't going to object.

Naked, Dick turned towards the bed, but Nix caught his shoulder and pulled him back into an embrace. The brass buttons up the front of Nix's uniform scratched Dick's bare chest and the wool of his pinks was rough against Dick's cock. Somehow, Dick always expected Nix to have soft hands, but even after ten days at home, presumably in the lap of luxury, his calluses scrapped up and down Dick's arms as Nix rubbed him. His blunt nails dug into Dick's back and he pulled their bodies close.

That kiss was what Dick had really missed. He'd been with a couple of the guys on the F&M wrestling team, but that had just been messing around, the kind that almost never got as far as kissing. This was like being devoured. Nix's tongue was in Dick's mouth, and Dick could hardly breathe from the intensity of it. He buried his hands in Nix's hair, struggling to get a hold of strands slick with pomade.

Nix muttered something against Dick's mouth—which could have been "Missed you," but that might have been wishful thinking—then he put his hands on Dick's shoulders and shoved him away towards the bed. Laughing, Dick made a show of pin wheeling his arms and collapsing sideways into an artless sprawl across the covers. Nix stood over him, hands on his hips, failing to look in any way menacing.

They halted there. Normally, this would be when Nix stripped as well, then climbed on top of Dick, or at least opened his trousers and then climbed on top of Dick. The new game left them both unsure, so Dick took the initiative and rolled over onto all fours, his ass presented to Nix.

"Jesus Christ," Nix muttered, and took a deep breath. "All right. Do you uh... do you want me to say anything?"

Dick blinked. "Like what?"

"I don't know, 'Bad boy'? Or something? Make you count, or..." Nix trailed off in uncertainty and embarrassment.

"Oh for Pete's sake," Dick muttered. This was getting too complicated, and he was starting to feel stupid. He didn't want to have to explain what he wanted; he wanted Nix to just know. Nix usually seemed to know, especially when it came to sex. Now, even though it had been Nix's suggestion, it was looking like he wanted Dick to take the lead. Dick sighed faintly. "No, I don't want that."

"Okay, okay," Nix said, and then they both paused again.

The length of a revival tent sermon later, Nix stepped in and put his hand on Dick's hip. Expecting a blow, Dick flinched, and Nix swore too softly to hear anything but the intention.

Dick hovered on the edge of saying that this was stupid, and that they should just do what they usually did; it wasn't like that had ever been anything less than magnificent. Now things had gotten all tangled up, and they were wasting the first free moments they'd had together all year.

Then Nix stroked up the length of Dick's spine and back down again. Dick knew he was being calmed, but his body still responded. He let out a long breath and relaxed. His hips sank a little, spreading his legs wider, and some of the tension singing through his muscles eased out. Dick realised he'd been clenching his teeth. He'd been working on a hard on when they'd been making out, but having to explain himself had put an end to that. Now his cock hung limply between his legs, swaying slightly as he shifted to get more comfortable.

Nix cupped Dick's ass with both hands and kneaded the muscles. Dick whimpered. He wanted to grab a pillow and bury his face in it, but that felt like hiding. He let his head drop until his hair brushed the cheap hotel bedspread, closed his eyes, and focused on the feel of Nix's hands on him. Nix had moved to massaging the backs of Dick's thighs, his strong, rough fingers digging into the lines of tension until Dick found himself slumping forward, giving way under the warmth of Nix's touch. His cock was starting to get a little more interested too, especially when Nix brushed the backs of his fingers over Dick's balls and down the length of his prick. When Dick moaned, Nix repeated the gesture a few times.

When Dick was hard again, Nix stopped touching him. Dick's ears strained for the sound of the cap coming off a tube of slick, or Nix unbuttoning his fly, but only heard Nix's soft breathing and the blood pounding through his own ears. "Lew?" he asked after a moment.

"Are you... um... are you ready?"

"What?" Dick started to ask. His ass clearly wasn't ready just to be screwed, but then he remembered where they'd started. He tried to think about the feel of Nix's hand on his ass the other day, and then had to shift his legs a little wider as his cock pulsed with lust. "Uh, yeah, I guess I am."

"All right," Nix said, still sounding dubious.

Dick heard him move a little, but still somehow wasn't expecting the smack of Nix's palm across the side of his hip. Like the impromptu smack in the barracks, it didn't connect quite right, and it didn't exactly hurt, but the impact still shocked a gasp out of Dick. Nix moved again, shifting sideways, and this time his hand came down right on the globe of Dick's ass cheek. The smack of flesh on flesh filled the room, snatching Dick's breath. He didn't even feel the pain until Nix drew his hand away, and then a biting flush spread out from the point of contact.

"Jesus," Nix muttered, and Dick saw a flash of himself though Nix's eyes, kneeling in front of him with his legs spread and his cock hard, a red hand print blooming on his ass. He vaguely felt that he should feel ashamed of looking like such a slut, but the echoes of pain were still rippling across his nerve endings, and all he wanted was more.

Dick wiggled his ass, and Nix chuckled. The next blow landed wrong—too much of the side of Nix's fingers catching the cradle of Dick's hips—but Nix followed up right away with a better aimed strike, which caught the back of Dick's thighs and sizzled across his skin. Two proper smacks in, and Dick was already breathing hard, perspiration rising on his skin. Dick could feel the beads of sweat forming along his hairline and he licked the salt off his upper lip. The dampness of his skin made Nix's next swing land harder, or maybe the sound was just louder. The air felt cold against Dick's ass, soothing the heated skin at the same time as it made Dick shiver.

Nix ran his hand over Dick's skin, and the roughness of his palm dragged against what felt like raw nerve endings. Dick whimpered, too high and pleading for someone who'd just gotten a couple of taps, and he would have flushed with embarrassment at it if his blood wasn't already surging close to the skin, making everything feel more acute.

"How's this supposed to work?" Nix asked, but not in a tone that expected an answer. "Twenty-five and one to grow on?"

Dick made an inarticulate sound low in his throat. If Nix was only counting the solid hits, that was another twenty or so, and Dick's ass already felt hot and too sensitive.

"But I could do fewer?" Nix said uncertainly, and they were back to that again, just when Dick had started to feel things were going well. "Or..."

"Why don't you use your belt," Dick said. He thought, as he said it, that it was just to cut out this endless waffling, but hearing his own words, he decided he meant them. Nix's hand felt good, but Dick could taste his need for more.

"What?" Nix demanded, and when Dick's shoulders tensed as he balled his hands into fists, "Uh, yeah, sure."

Fabric rustled, and then Dick heard the slide of Nix's webbing belt out of his trousers, a sensuous hissing sound that made him shiver in anticipation. Nix laid his left hand on Dick's hip to steady him for a moment, then stepped away. Dick could hear the fabric whoosh through the air, and his heart leapt into his throat, his adrenaline preparing him for a crack of pain far more intense than anything Nix's hand had been able to accomplish.

The belt flopped across Dick's ass like a wet noodle.

"Oh for Christ's sake," Nix muttered. He drew back again, and again hit with the same result. "This is not..."

Dick buried his face in his hands, and belatedly considered that the weight of a woven fabric belt might not really be enough to gain the momentum needed to actually hit someone. Not for the first time, he thought that the leather rationing really was going too far. He didn't think that Nix would appreciate a comment on the physics of the thing, either way, especially not when he was swearing softly and whacking the belt against his own hand to test it.

"You really don't have to..." Dick stopped talking on Nix's snarl of frustration. He considered rolling onto his side and watching what Nix was doing. However, Dick didn't think giving him an audience would help. Least ways, the tenor of the smacks against his own hand changed. They had a heavy, thudding quality now, and Dick assumed Nix had started to double the fabric over on itself.

"Ow," Nix grumbled. "All right, I think we're cooking."

By now, Dick's hard on had started to flag again, and the glow of pain from the earlier blows was more uncomfortable than enticing, but he lifted his head and let Nix do what he would.

He didn't get any warning past Nix's words, the belt didn't whoosh through the air, and he didn't hear a grunt of effort from Nix. The thrice-folded webbing thwacked into his ass: a solid, stinging impact with more density than Nix's palm. Dick gasped in pain, and again at the throbbing depth as Nix pulled away. It seemed to echo through his whole body with every heartbeat, and every heartbeat made his cock harder again.

"Let's call that five," Nix said. Dick could hear an edge in his voice, something sharp and hard under the veneer of nonchalance. "And, six." He didn't hit the same place again, but the belt fell on top of one of the earlier smacks and lit up every nerve in Dick's ass. He let out a rough cry. His fingers tightened on the blankets and he tried to relax and breathe through the pain, but his body didn't want it to ebb away; somehow it wanted more.

Dick did have to snag a pillow and bury his face in it as Nix placed the next few blows on the backs of his thighs. He felt like his skin was burning, like it had when Nix had spanked him, but under that ran a deeper bite, one that beat through his body like a pulse. He was sweating again, and breathing hard, and they weren't even halfway done yet.

Nix put the tenth blow on Dick's lower back, just above the hard line of his hip bone, and Dick felt tears spring to his eyes. Each time the belt hit him, he needed to inhale and exhale at the same time, and it all got so tangled up inside him that he could hardly breathe. His cock ached with a need to be touched, even as each time the belt connected with Dick's skin felt like a perverse caress. The impact shocked through his skin and rippled from pain to pleasure as it spread.

As Nix's count climbed past fifteen, Dick held onto the pillow and let himself cry into it. He thought he was begging Nix for more, but he couldn't be sure. His whole body felt alive with the sensation of the flogging, each nerve ending telling him something different until his brain stopped trying to handle the messages and floated, like an acorn cap miraculously staying upright in a rushing stream.

He heard Nix say "twenty," and knew that they were coming to an end, but at the same time wasn't sure what that meant. Part of his brain told him that he should be praying for the pain to stop, while another part gaily sang that he'd never felt this good, and that if he wanted to spread his wings and lift into the air he could.

The belt falling on an earlier strike pulled Dick back into himself, the blow magnified across his body until he felt it in his bones. "Please," he moaned, sure of the word this time, and when it brought the rise and fall of the belt to a halt, "Lew, dammit, _come on_."

"Jesus Christ," Nix whispered, his voice floating into Dick's awareness, strained yet full of awe. "All right, just..." They were almost done, Nix let the belt fall three more times, the last saying, "And one for luck, because you're damn well going to need it."

Then it all stopped.

Dick lay panting, clinging to the pillow as though he'd drown without it. His body rang like a church bell—each vibration a memory of a different feeling—but his mind felt oddly blank. He focused on hauling in one breath after another, but his whole body was shaking too hard to make that work. Tears pricked his eyes, and Dick wiped his face against the pillow to clear them.

The bed shifted as Nix crawled up next to him. He was still dressed in his service uniform, and the wool scratched against Dick's skin. Even the places Nix hadn't struck felt too sensitive. Dick couldn't tell if his body hungered for touch or for the relief of stillness, but when Nix threw his arm around Dick's shoulders and pulled him close, Dick was pretty sure it was touch he wanted after all.

Nix was kissing his face, lips sloppy and wet on his cheek and the shell of his ear. He was telling Dick that he was beautiful and he'd been good for him, and Dick supposed that it had to be true. He'd never felt much like Nix's compliments could be anything rather than pretty lies—the kind he'd just spent weeks telling his wife—but now they didn't seem as unlikely as they usually did.

Dick turned his head so that Nix could kiss him, and Nix eagerly joined their mouths. His lips felt cool against Dick's overheated body, even though now, this close, Dick could tell Nix was breathing almost as fast as he was. If they'd been planning ahead at all, Dick would have gotten himself ready so Nix could fuck him. As it was, they'd have to improvise.

He was still on his knees, with his legs spread far wider than they'd been at the start. Dick pulled them together, drew a breath, and said, "Lew, you can, uh, use my thighs."

Nix frowned. "Won't that hurt?"

"Probably," Dick admitted, but he didn't see where that was a problem. Everything they'd done so far had been the kind of hurt he'd wanted.

"Not going to turn you down twice." Nix sat up and stripped out of his jacket and tie, but didn't do more than open the fly of his pinks. He ghosted his hand over Dick's ass, not quite touching the skin, but Dick still felt goosebumps rising under his phantom touch, and a shiver ran slowly up his spine like Nix was walking his fingers along it. Dick heard Nix spit on his hand, and suck in a breath as he stroked himself. Then felt the head of Nix's cock against the backs of his thighs. Dick held his legs together, making Nix force his way between them, the spit only slightly easing the way. Nix's hands closed on Dick's hips, and he started to whine with the effort of holding himself together.

The dull intrusion of Nix's cock between his thighs had often felt odd to Dick, no matter how convenient it was when they were in a rush or one of them had forgotten to bring slick, but this time it felt like a continuation of the hand and belt on his ass. Nix's fingers dug in a little harder than usual, and there was a moment of exquisite pain when the front of his trousers met Dick's tender skin. Dick nearly sobbed at how good it felt. Every sensation in the room—from the squeak of the bedsprings as Nix started to thrust, to the acid drip of Nix's sweat onto Dick's lower back, to the granular feel of the pilled cotton bedspread under his palms—they all felt more vividly real and present than had seemed possible before. Dick would have felt like he was spinning apart to encompass the whole room, except for Nix's hands gripping his hips, Nix's cock sliding between his thighs, claiming Dick and holding him in place.

Nix was moving steadily, and Dick knew he was trying to make this last longer; he had that even, shallow beat like when he was thinking of something boring to try restrain himself. Dick was too close to the edge to want to turn this into a marathon. His skin itched for release, even as the buzz of lust rushed through his blood, filling his ears.

"Lew," he said, then had to clear his throat, which was clogged from crying out. "Lew, let me have it."

"Christ," Nix muttered. He flexed his hands where they held onto Dick, fingers rippling over his skin as he checked his grip. It was as much of a warning as Dick got before Nix pulled back and slammed back into the space between Dick's thighs. Even with his trousers between them, his hips striking Dick's ass drew a cry out of him. It felt like every strike of the belt at once, and then some. One of Nix's buttons kept catching between them, digging in, and sending shocks of pain through Dick's body, until he felt his spine light on fire and his toes curl to try to shift the sensation away. Dick's cock bobbed with each thrust, untouched since Nix had brushed his hand against it what felt like an hour ago. Dick could feel the heat building inside him, the need for release seeming to skim across the burning surface of his skin and pool in his gut. It built with each thrust between his thighs, each heavy grunt escaping Nix's lips.

"God, yeah," Nix muttered, and bent to kiss Dick's shoulder, his sweat damp hair trailed across Dick's skin, tickling the back of his neck. "Dick," Nix groaned.

It was hearing his name on Nix's lips that did it, in the end. Dick spent himself across the covers, his dick untouched, trying to hide his cry in the pillow. From the frenzy with which Nix laid kisses across his shoulder, Dick hadn't managed concealment, but it hardly mattered, not here. It didn't seem to Dick like a hell of a lot mattered any more.

He lay drifting as Nix finished, his body a haze of pleasure and pain so thoroughly mixed together that he couldn't keep track of which was which.

Nix rolled off of him, falling on his side next to Dick, still breathing hard, and immediately Dick longed to be touched again.

If he was true to form, Nix would be asleep pretty fast. Dick collapsed forward, landing in their come as it mingled on the bedspread. He was usually the one to clean up, but getting off the bed didn't seem likely. A chill ran over his body, as though he'd expended all the heat he was capable of producing, and Dick started to shiver.

"Mmm?" Nix asked, lifting his head. His eyebrows came down and he reached over to pull Dick into a half embrace. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah," Dick said, but he felt odd, unsure of what he wanted. Nix's arm around him seemed like a good start, so he rolled to his side so that he was facing Nix, and curled up against him.

Nix was still frowning, and propped himself up on his elbow to peer at Dick. He kept he arm around his shoulders, and shuffled closer so that Dick could press his face into Nix's chest. Nix kissed his hair absently and ran his hand up and down Dick's biceps, trying to warm away the sudden goosebumps. "Hey," he murmured, and started to run little kisses over Dick's head, finally finding bare skin he could reach behind his ear.

Dick shivered again, and fumbled behind him until he got a handful of the bedspread and pulled it over himself and Nix. Lying in the middle of it and pulling it half over them didn't quite work as cover, but he liked the feeling of being wrapped up with Nix, however haphazardly. He'd missed sleeping next to him, even on manoeuvres, when they both spent the night fully dressed in separate sleeping bags. This felt better, a relief after everything to be able to close his eyes and listen to the beat of Nix's heart.

Nix wrapped both arms around Dick and held him tight. One of his hands got too far down Dick's back, hitting a bruise left by the belt, and Dick sucked in a breath. "Aw, jeeze," Nix muttered, and squeezed the back of Dick's neck. He flipped the other half of the covers over them, so that a double layer rested over the space where their bodies met. "There we go."

"Thanks," Dick muttered, feeling stupid, but glad Nix was obliging. He kept his face pressed to Nix's chest, and breathed slowly until his body started to calm. The ache of deep-set bruises throbbed through his thighs, ass and lower back, and it belatedly occurred to him that he was going to have to come up with some kind of cover story for that. Maybe he fell down some stairs trying to help a drunken Nix into bed. It wouldn't surprise anyone, but seemed a little cruel after Nix had been obliging.

Nix was still being obliging, cuddling Dick and staying awake long enough to almost kiss the pain back into pleasure. Dick could feel the care in his touch, and that was enough to wash all his other worries away, at least for the moment.

"Well," Nix said, and drew in a deep breath. His heart was still beating fast against Dick's skin, and the cocoon of blankets was rank with sweat and come. "Happy birthday, I guess."

Dick snorted. "Thanks, Nix. Couldn't ask for anything more."

The strange part, Dick thought, was that it was true.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos totally make my day, and I very much appreciate comments of every length, percentage of emoji, and level of coherency.


End file.
